HOWARD SKEMPTON’S WEIRD MUSIC

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

OIP

On top of my desk I have a book: Ben Yagoda’s WHEN YOU CATCH AN ADJECTIVE, KILL IT! It has become a sort of writer’s bible for me. So, when I sat down to listen to the métier (msv28580) release of The Man Hurdy Gurdy & me with music by Howard Skempton, I was struck by the work of this English iconoclast, and following that by my utter inability to come up with words to describe my reaction.

I needed not dig for negatives. I got hooked from track 1 through track 14, waiting to hear what this musical maverick next had up his wizardly sleeve. I mean the man plays with sound the way a kid plays with favorite toys, assembling the unlikeliest of instrumental companions in unpredictable groupings. Forget traditional structures – there are none in this music. Harmony..? Yes, actually. Very consonant. Contrapuntal rigidity..? Nope. Melody..? Well, yes, but not your recognizable kind. When he pairs the marvelously malleable soprano Sara Stowe with a gamelan ensemble one quickly comes to understand Debussy’s reaction to the Balinese orchestra he heard back in the day at the time of the Paris World Fair of 1889.

But for Goodness’ sake do not for a minute think of Skempton as being another musical prankster along the lines of John Cage. No. This is seriously fun music, as entertaining as it is complex in its sonorities and its devil-may-care approach to instrumentation. I mean would you EVER pair a hurdy-gurdy with percussion, oboe, flute and keyboard? Some chamber music!

The multi-lingual liner notes shun reverence and musicological gobbledygook in three languages, focusing instead on the facts. The ensemble in charge of these giddy proceedings is named Sirinu (www.sirinu.org) and they take on their multi-instrumental tasks with enthusiasm and accuracy.

If I were you I’d check them out just to hear what’s happening with new music on the other side of the pond and outside of Academia. You just might enjoy it as much as I did: https://youtu.be/oXoJ3Tw3XlY

Rafael de Acha http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”